Donald Trump on Saturday rejected an offer to debate his Democratic rival Kamala Harris again ahead of the US presidential election.
• Read also: What if Trump doesn't actually want to win this election?
“It's too late to have another debate, the voting has already started,” the Republican candidate said during a campaign rally in North Carolina, referring to the start of advance voting in some states across the country.
Democratic candidate Kamala Harris challenged her Republican rival Donald Trump to a debate again, on CNN on October 23, just days before the US presidential election.
“Vice President Harris is ready to take on Donald Trump on stage again,” her campaign team wrote in a statement.
The former Republican president has so far rejected the idea of facing his rival again in the November 5 election.
“beat”
By all accounts, she was the one who dominated the debate on September 10, constantly pulling her opponent toward topics likely to hurt her ego: participation in her rallies, discontent with his former political allies, his international reputation…
This did not prevent Donald Trump from asserting that, on the contrary, he was the one who “won” the debate, while attacking the integrity of the two journalists who moderated the debates on ABC.
Donald Trump's team did not immediately respond to AFP's requests about whether it would eventually accept this new exchange.
“There will be no third debate,” the Republican nominee asserted in mid-September, citing his televised June exchange with then-candidate President Joe Biden and his confrontation with the vice president.
Seven states to win
With 45 days to go before the election, the outcome of the presidential election remains more uncertain than ever, with Donald Trump and Kamala Harris competing in several of the seven key states where everything is likely to be decided.
The septuagenarian Republican will be at a campaign rally early this afternoon in one of them: North Carolina.
The former president won this southeastern state overlooking the Atlantic Ocean during a duel with Joe Biden in 2020.
But her new rival Kamala Harris is counting on African Americans and young people, two voters her candidacy has re-energized, to win there in November.
Especially since Donald Trump could be suffering from a scandal involving a gubernatorial candidate whom the Republican billionaire has long backed heavily.
Mark Robinson, who aims to become the state's first black governor, is accused of posting controversial messages about Nazism or slavery on a pornographic website during the 2000s, according to CNN.
If the presidential election is held on November 5, America has already started voting. Polls opened Friday for early voting in Virginia, Minnesota and South Dakota.